April 2018

Initial Project Proposal

“Design and build something robotic that solves a need.” This was all we needed to drive us toward the direction of what would eventually become SmartyPill. We were given this prompt in our freshman basic engineering course and we immediately thought of all those in the community who struggle adhering to their difficult medication schedules. Our initial solution was to strap a couple paper cups and servos together with a simple computer that would tell the servos when to turn on. The ideas continued to come to us and soon we had a full fledged automatic pill dispenser, SmartyPill.

August 2018

Young Makers Competition

We were proud of the effort we put into SmartyPill during our freshman year. We decided to continue with the project in our leisure and see how many people we could help with it. Whilst browsing for ways to gain credibility with the project, we stumbled upon a competition hosted by Google that would allow us to do just that. We submitted SmartyPill and soon forgot about it. A few months later, we received an email saying we were finalists in the first phase of the competition and we would have the opportunity to travel and compete in Beijing, China. Here, we managed to place in the top 25 out of 2,000 worldwide, including 75 finalists.

August 2019

IDEA

While continuing to work on the technical aspects of SmartyPill we decided it was also time to focus upon the business aspect and how we were going to get this product to help as many people as possible. We decided to apply to a venture accelerator program at Northeastern University known as IDEA. After we were accepted, we were able to get advice and guidance on how to obtain customer interviews and how to advance the product as a business.

November 2019

Husky Startup Challenge

In order to advance our product from ideation to a fully realized product, we took part in the Husky Startup Challenge. HSC is a semester-long pitching competition funded by Northeastern University where students participate in well-designed bootcamps that cover business modeling, prototyping, and many other topics. HSC culminates by giving select ventures a chance to pitch their idea onstage in front of a panel of judges and hundreds of spectators. SmartyPill ended up winning 2nd place along with funding for our venture.

January 2020

Generate

We continued to explore opportunities that could help us advance SmartyPill beyond our garage project. We again looked to leverage Northeastern University resources through Generate - the student run product development studio. Generate aims to accelerate products and ventures through rapid prototyping. With Generate, we were able to advance the mechanical aspects of the SmartyPill device, as well as develop software to support a network of devices. This transformed SmartyPill into a product that could exist in homes around the world.

February 2020

Startup Summit Boston

Our next opportunity to advance SmartyPill’s brand recognition presented itself as Startup Summit Boston - a networking, mentoring, and pitching competition between 50+ entrepreneurs from all over Boston. The summit also presented a speaker series featuring founders of ​Her Campus Media​ and ​IFundWomen​ who shared their insight on starting their own businesses. We were excited to network and connect with many entrepreneurs, as well as win first place in the pitching competition!

April 2020

Scout

By now, we felt the name SmartyPill needed a stronger brand to convey its growing product identity. We looked no further than Scout, a product design studio at Northeastern University composed of students with professional experience in design and branding. With Scout’s help, we created a site where anyone can learn about SmartyPill - as a product and a brand.

December 2021

Capstone

To further development on SmartyPill we opted to break into two teams for our Senior Year Capstone Project. We brought on a few members for both our mechanical and ece teams to advance the physical prototype and the driving software and circuit board.